Feature Writing

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NATIONAL TRAINING OF TRAINERS

ON CAMPUS JOURNALISM
DECEMBER 12, 2017
Feature VS. News
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Hard news stories move

The goal of a feature story is
briskly through the five W's
to communicate the truth --
and the H, packing in just
not fiction --in a different
enough detail to give readers
way than a hard news story.
a clear picture of the news.
Immediacy is In feature, the immediacy of the event
everything in hard is secondary. It's replaced by reader
news. interest. Elaboration, mood, context,
detailed description, emotion and,
sometimes, humor surround bare
facts.
Feature VS. News
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News and feature stories are meant to complement

each other, and allow a newspaper to offer well-
rounded coverage that varies in depth and
timeliness. While the two styles share basic
elements, they differ in the treatment of an issue,
depth of research, style of writing and structure of
the piece.
Structure
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The news uses the inverted

pyramid structure while feature
uses the hourglass structure
Objectives
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Feature articles can be said to have two

aims: INFORM and ENTERTAIN. Ideally, a
feature has elements of both and the writer
can use a variety of techniques and
devices to add “color” to the story.
Elements
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human
interest
news
Common Types of Feature
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• News feature
• In-depth
• Personality profile
• How-to
• Historical
Feature Writing Techniques
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Figurative language helps recreate scenes or sensations.

It’s how a writer shows us tells the story. Devices include:

Simile
A stated comparison between two different things.
Examples:
The borders in Israel shift almost as often as the sands in the
Judean Hills.

The suspect looks as white as a sheet

Feature Writing Techniques
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Personification
Giving life-like characteristics to something lifeless.

Examples: The fog crept in on tiny cat feet.

The wind howled like a child in pain.
Feature Writing Techniques
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Hyperbole
Emphasizing something by deliberately overstating or
understating it.

Examples: “I was so embarrassed I could have died.”

“I could eat a million of these”
Feature Writing Techniques
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Metaphor
An implied comparison between two unlike things.

Examples: To the soldiers in his unit, Carlos walks on

water.
That man will betray you. He is a snake.
Ingredients of a Feature article
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• Facts
• Quotes
• Anecdotes
Writing Process
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Story ideas
 Feature story ideas come from everywhere: from friends,
personal observation, conversations overheard in the canteen,
etc.
 Once you have a story idea, decide exactly what focus you
want to emphasize. Your focus is the angle you want for the
story.
 Remember your audience (who you're writing for) when
planning your feature.
Writing Process
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Collecting the Information

Always do background research for your story. You must have a clear
idea of your subject before you set the interview.

Plan your questions

 Always collect more information than you need. It’s better than not
enough.
 Capture the emotion. People want to know how your subject feels
about why he/she does something.
 Use all your senses. See, hear, smell, touch, taste. Make notes of
how people move, dress, speak, etc.
 Observe. Train yourself to notice everything.
Writing the LEAD
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The LEAD has two tasks:

 To get the reader's interest

so that he or she will want
to read more.
The LEAD
is the introduction
 To let the reader know
of a typical
feature. what the writing is going to
be about.
Writing the LEAD
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Common types of LEAD:

 Striking statement
 Question
 Contrast
 Summary
 Quotation
 Description
 Narration
LEAD CONTRAST
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No Love Lost over Erap

Joseph Estrada told me he was going to be the best
president this country would ever have. He struck me as
sincere and I believed him. I supported him.

Unfortunately, he had no real sense of what is right and

wrong. He had no sense of accountability and governance.

For instance…
LEAD QUOTATION
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Making It in Hong Kong

“…Ito ho ang inyong Tita Kerry na bumabati sa inyo (this is your Tita Kerry greeting
you).”

Only a few Filipinos in Hong Kong haven’t heard of, or don’t know, Tita Kerry. For the
last 13 years, the radio personality has been giving personal and even financial
advice to listeners of the “Philippines Tonight” show, which airs live on Friday and
Saturday nights.

Kerry and co-host Michael Vincent have a captive audience that other Hong Kong
radio programmers can only dream about. Their unique brand of Pinoy talk radio
attracts the majority of the 155,000-strong Filipino community because they take the
homesick overseas workers a bit closer to home.
LEAD DESCRIPTIVE
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The Bridges of Abra

No one ever goes to Abra by chance. It is not some place one passes through to reach a farther destination.
Because no place seems farther than Abra, an out-of-the-way province 10 hours from Manila, a dead end in the
western side of the Cordillera region, where mountains and hills have been ravaged by decades of logging activity
and where many towns remain isolated by the absence of roads and bridges.

The Abra River cuts through the province's rugged terrain, and the Abra River basin is the sixth largest in the
Philippines. During the wet months, the river is wild, bursting forth from the Cordillera mountains, surging toward
Ilocos Sur and spilling over into tributaries in the Abra low lands. In the summer months, the riverbed turns into a
wasteland of rock and gravel that only the toughest four-wheel drives can hope to survive crossing.

During the times the river is flowing, one must take the motorized ferry, which is actually a platform mounted on
rows of what look like steel canoes. The ferry service runs from morning to midnight in some parts of Abra. The
bigger ferries from the capital Bangued can accommodate two vehicles at a time, a marked improvement from the
bamboo rafts that in years past braved the strong currents to carry people across the river.

The ferries are a constant reminder that bridges are sorely needed in Abra. "In the interiors, children have
drowned because of the absence even of hanging bridges," says Pura Sumangil, chairperson of the non-
governmental group Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG).
LEAD STRIKING SENTENCE
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Tiempo Muerte
Hunger, she would have said, in response to the question you dared not ask, is a
bitterness in the belly, a grumbling in the gut, a deprivation that cannot be put in words,
not by you who have never known what it is like to suckle children from empty breasts, to
watch them lifeless all day and nearly blind at night, to put them to sleep chewing on
cane, sucking on the sweetness that cannot drive away the bitterness in the belly, that
cannot quiet the grumbling in the gut.

Hunger, she said, even if you did not ask, is all around, on the haciendas and in the
slums, in the pillages and the mountains and on the coast, everywhere so palpable that
no one can deny it exists. Look, she said, at the big blank eyes of hunger that stare at
you, the bloated bellies, the sores that refuse to heal. The dank stench of unfulfilled need
assaults you.
LEAD SUMMARY
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Information Deficit
It used to be that wealth was defined in terms of gold, land, oil
and machinery. Today, its principal measure is information. For
which corporations like CNN, Microsoft and Time Warner that
deal in "weightless goods" have become the new lords of the
global village -of a world of disappearing borders and a
shrunken time-space continuum.
LEAD QUESTION
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Who to Believe?
Who to believe –Malacañang or the Philippine Daily Inquirer?

A series of reports on an impending Cabinet revamp was on the

front page of the most widely-circulated broadsheet in the
country for weeks but were almost routinely contradicted by
denials from Palace officials, among them Press Secretary
Ignacio Bunye and Rigoberto Tiglao, President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s spokesperson.
LEAD NARRATION
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Something in the Way He Moved Us

By the fall of 1995, the youngest Beatle had edged into his 50s and was famously weary of things
like Beatles. Still, on the eve of the multimedia reunion known as “The Beatles Anthology,” George
Harrison granted Newsweek an interview, on the condition that it be conducted by fax. A tricky
way to interview someone, it turns out. Particularly someone well known for his elusiveness and
his wit. Harrison was asked, “When you see McCartney and/or Starr these days, do you hug or
shake hands?” And he faxed back, “Yes.” But when asked if retelling the band’s history for the
“Anthology” was healing or boring or neither, Harrison became more expansive: “The upside of the
Beatles was always far bigger than the downside, and it was good to remember that. In reality, the
Beatles existed apart from my Self. I am not really “Beatle George.” Beatle George is like a suit or
shirt that I once wore on occasion and until the end of my life people may see the shirt and
mistake it for me.”

Harrison died of cancer on Nov. 29 at a friend’s home in Los Angeles…

LEAD NARRATION
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Twilight of the Sea People

In one of the houses on stilts along the shore of Teheman, beyond the mangrove trees in
this coastal town in Mindanao, a mother is singing to her six-month-old daughter. But as
the child is lulled to sleep, another listener is moved to tears.

Beautiful Hanangcries as she curls up on her colorful bridal mat. Her neighbor
Furaydah'ssongs of lost love have brought on memories of Misdal, her husband, who left
months ago to join the pirates and never returned.

Just this afternoon, Hanang, all of 14, had an abortion. Although her eyes are filled with
tears, she says it is all for the best, since she would have been unable to feed her
fatherless baby. "It would be a shame for her to have a child without a father," agrees
Hanang'smother. "The child will just die because we will not be able to feed it. It would just
be a problem for us later. We don't have any burial place to bury it."
LEAD NARRATION
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Hanang, however, is unlikely to be the last in her community to make such a decision. For
she is one of the Bajau, and for many years now, these once proud people have been
taking steps that have broken their own hearts and led them farther away from what they
used to be -self-reliant people of the sea.
ENDING
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A feature may end with an

ironic, humorous, sad or
summarizing statement to • Circling back
impart the total effect. • Looking ahead
• Spreading out
ENDING
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Information Deficit
As trends show a reality far removed from the pursuit of the
poverty eradicating promise of the Internet, groups like APC are
demonstrating that technology privatization and concentration by
profit-driven corporations have gone too far. And that it's time
now for global technological breakthroughs to serve people and
not just the agenda of the market economy.
ENDING
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Tiempo Muerte
In The Huk Rebellion, American political scientist Benedict Kerkvliet traces peasant unrest
in Central Luzon to the breakdown of the paternalistic landlord-tenant relationships that had
always characterized farm life in Central Luzon. In the 1920s and '30s, Kerkvliet notes, a
new generation of landowners had taken over the huge rice and sugar farms in Central
Luzon. These landowners were driven primarily by the capitalist imperative of maximum
profits made necessary when the American colonizers opened up the Philippines to
competitive trade in the world market. It was the clash of new and traditional values which
fueled peasant discontent.

As Negros Occidental goes through its most difficult season, no one knows whether, on this
island stalked by hunger and death, history will be proven right. Or wrong.
ENDING
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The Bridges of Abra

The bridges of Abra remain as incomplete or as decrepit as ever,
reminders of the sorry state of the province's infrastructure and
the lack of foresight and planning of Abra officials. Says Bringas:
"Abra leaders should have had an overall plan and vision so that
they could determine which projects to prioritize funding for. Had
that happened, we wouldn't have bridges like these. We could
have at least one completed bridge.”
ENDING
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Something in the Way He Moved Us

His life seemed like an eccentric enterprise from afar, but that’s what it
was meant to be: his life, not a Beatle’s life. In 1999, a deranged
heroin addict broke into Harrison’s Oxfordshire mansion and, it’s said,
would have stabbed the singer to death had Harrison not grabbed the
point of the knife with his palm. You’d think that nearly losing Harrison
then would have prepared us for this. If only it had. “I am devastated.”
McCartney said last week. “He was a lovely guy and very brave and
had a wonderful sense of humor. He really is just my baby brother.”

It’s a bleak day for us too. Here comes the cloud. There goes the sun.
ENDING
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Twilight of the Sea People

"People come to talk to us about our problems but nothing has happened," says his
neighbor, Marriam. "We still have no boats. Just listen to the song of Furaydah. If
you will understand, you will know our story and you will not talk to us anymore."

But Furayda'ssinging is interrupted by the distinct crack of a rifle. A child starts

crying.

Marriamsays to the visitors, "Don't worry. Go to sleep now. We will know tomorrow
who it is this time. It's normal here. People get killed."

Her husband quickly admonishes her, "Hush, don't frighten them. They will still
have to write our story."
Writing the body
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While the lead draws people to see what the article is all
about, the subsequent paragraphs should clearly support
the lead and explain the reason why the story is important

Choose the most interesting detail

and then explain how it came to be.

General to particular Choose an ordinary detail and

Particular to general explain how it is actually the most
amazing thing.
Writing the body
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Even veteran journalists make outlines when writing

Choose an ordinary detail and explain how it is

actually the most amazing thing.
Writing the feature article
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Write the story!

 Use descriptive verbs and nouns
 Be specific in description. Create a detailed picture the
reader can SEE.
The feeling is indescribable, surreal. There’s an ice-
cold ball in the pit of your stomach. Your mouth is dry.
You wish you were just in the middle of a bad dream.
Everyone around you has a ghastly look on their
faces.

This is how it is during the first moments when you

realize that your car has been stolen. All you can
mutter is, my car was just here and now it’s gone!
Writing the feature article
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Write the story!

 Use only the best quotes. The quotes must SAY or
SHOW something.
“Dili kami peste!”

This is the cry of communities near banana plantations in

Mindanao who have to suffer the adverse effects of regular toxic
aerial spraying meant to kill pests in bananas.
Writing the feature article
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Revise and rewrite!@*&%

Write the story, then polish it. Test your story by
asking "What is this story about?" Your lead and nu
graf should answer that question.
Titles
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Tips for Feature Writing
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1. Tell the story through people, perhaps

even leading with how an issue or event affects
a real person.
2. Look for the telling or
entertaining anecdote
3. Be creative. Use descriptive phrasing and
strong, action verbs, but don't overwrite.
Tips for Feature Writing
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4. Be clear and punchy. If you must write

a longer sentence, follow it up with a short
one.
5. Avoid trite, declarative phrases that state the
obvious or recycle well-worn sayings. Dull!
6. Select only the liveliest or most
interesting quotes.
Don't stack quotes or quote mundane
information that you can paraphrase.
Words to inspire us
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The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it

right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can
always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase,
the leaping simile.
-Robert Cormier

 There is always pain in good writing